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Back To The Future: Use Of Percentage Fee Arrangements In Common Fund Litigation, Bennet A. Mcconaughy

Seattle University Law Review

The premise of this Article is that common fund litigation will be most efficiently and beneficially prosecuted if attorney fees are awarded under a methodology that makes parallel the interests of counsel in the fee award and of the class in the recovery. The Article examines the historical uses of the percentage fee, the development of and problems with, hourly based methods of computing fees, and the renewed trend toward the use of percentage fee awards. It concludes that, unlike hourly based methodologies, percentage fee arrangements align the interests of counsel with the interests of both the class and the …